A glad look came into the old man's eyes. "Throw yore gear right thar in thet south bedroom," he invited, pointing to its door. "It's all yores," he … - Harold Keith

Swimming probably ranks close to running, jumping and throwing as the oldest sport of all. We know that even the overhand swimming stroke was practiced by the Romans. Their paintings and mosaics show swimmers cutting through the water overhand, and others swimming with their faces in the water, which suggests the speedy crawl of modern times.
The Greeks and Romans knew a great deal about swimming and diving. Plato declared that in Greece, a man who was not able to swim and dive was as uneducated as one who was ignorant of letters. Caesar was a good swimmer, and Cato showed his son how to cross dangerous gulfs, and the Emperor Augustus taught his nephew to swim. In more modern times, Charlemagne was noted for his swimming stroke, King Louis XI of France often swam in the Seine at the head of his courtiers, and the swimming couriers of Peru traversed hundreds of miles of the South American continent swimming day and night down the rivers. They were aided only by a light log of wood, and their dispatches were enclosed in turbans on their heads.

Some of Norman's old-timers still remember what the interior of Risinger's little shop looked like in early September, when the sun fried the Oklahoma prairie, meadowlarks sat around gasping with their bills open and cicadas chirred maddeningly in the dog-day heat. On the east wall swung a one-by-twelve-foot mirror where customers startledly beheld themselves emerging from furry anonymity into pale recognizability. On the west wall dangled an arresting picture of a barber innocently about to lop off a customer's ear with his shears while watching a dog fight across the street. There were three red plush chairs, a gallery of ornate shaving mugs for the town's more progressive merchants, and a large, white queensware bowl on a shelf. Only cold water shaves were purveyed. It was too hot to heat the precious water Risinger obtained for five cents a bucket from the softwater cistern back of what is now the City National bank. It was in this tiny crucible in September, 1895, that long-haired Jack Harts first proposed, "Let's get up a football team," and football at Norman was born.

Despite an undeserved reputation for effeminacy, probably caused by its etiquette, tennis measures up to any sport in its demands upon skill, speed, stamina and gameness. The etiquette of tennis is more rigid than that of any other widely-played American sport. A tennis crowd sits dignified and sedately, applauding only at correct intervals and then with a pleasant patter of handclaps. The spectators do not raise parasols at matches, nor move around during actual play, nor boo players or officials. Tennis players always wear white clothing. In England, player and spectator conduct is even more conservative. While the English have a decided sense of humor, they will not tolerate comedy in tennis if it conflicts with the sport's conventions.